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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
- Thread starter CdnGuy
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Another reason this is a historic week — and what President Trump should really worry about — is that lots of different Republicans have been turning on him over different topics.
Why it matters: A former Trump aide who asked to be described as "a Trump ally" told Axios that the sudden wave of criticism from the Hill over Syria and Mattis should scare the president because he would desperately need these lawmakers' support during a possible impeachment battle.
- "Once Republican lawmakers start rebuking the president publicly like this over policy, it makes it easier for them to say: 'It's not just Mueller or ethics. There are other concerns.' Then it's a slippery slope."
- Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said after the Mattis announcement: "This is a sad day for America."
- "As long as [Mattis] served the president, reluctant Republicans could point to the Pentagon and say: If Mattis supports Trump, then so do I. They can no longer do that."
- But it's telling that few have the courage to say it publicly.
- So nothing matters more to Trump than keeping his base happy and loyal.
- Trump asked one trusted adviser: "Did you know [Mulvaney] called me 'a terrible human being'" back during the campaign?
Nuclear ...
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If the lesson of Watergate was “follow the money,” then the lesson of the Trump/Russia scandal may well be “follow the lies.” As Michael Flynn’s aborted sentencing hearing this week made very clear, he, like almost everyone else caught up in the Russia scandal, purposefully, knowingly did not tell the truth about contacts he had with representatives of the Russian government or its agents. The question is why? The nature of the contacts between the Trump campaign and a hostile foreign power, whatever they were, appear to have been so damning that many risked their careers, their reputations — and even their freedom — to hide it.
Flynn’s lies involve a series of phone calls he had in December 2016 with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. President Obama in his final days in office sanctioned Russia for election hacking. Flynn told Kislyak that Russia should not escalate the situation and he urged that the Kremlin only respond in a reciprocal manner. Kislayk told Flynn that Russia agreed to “moderate” its response, but the Kremlin’s restraint was so out-of-character that it reportedly triggered the inquiry into Flynn’s contacts in the first place.
However, when Flynn talked to FBI agents sitting in his White House office days after President Trump’s inauguration, he “stated he did not have a long, drawn-out discussion with KISLYAK where he would have asked him to ‘don’t do something,’” the FBI agents wrote in their memo of the conversations. Flynn apparently told this lie with ease. The FBI agents noted that Flynn “did not give any indicators of deception.”
The Kremlin, of course, knew the truth. And that gave a hostile foreign power potential leverage over the U.S. national security advisor, less than a week into Trump’s term in the White House.
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It’s hard to see all these Russia lies as coincidences, given the extraordinary help Russia provided to elect Trump — the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, the Wikileaks email dumps, the divisive social media messaging that, according to reports released by the Senate on Monday, reached millions of unsuspecting Americans.
Flynn’s case may suggest what Russia got, or hoped to get, in return.
Easing the pressure of U.S. sanctions was a key priority for the Kremlin, and Flynn’s conversation with the Russian ambassador left the impression that the incoming administration would be willing to do just that after the inauguration. Indeed, the Trump administration continues to soften America’s approach to Russia, as it did Wednesday when the Treasury Department announced plans to lift sanctions imposed on companies owned by Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch close to Putin who also happens to be one of Manafort’s former business partners.
The agents interviewing Flynn in his White House office pulled on a thread that may lead to extraordinary and perhaps criminal political offenses: an American presidential campaign and a hostile foreign power doing favors for each other. Flynn may have lied, almost reflexively, to keep the plot from unraveling.
One way or another, it will be the Trump administration’s lies about Russia that lead us to the truth.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw American troops from Syria was made hastily, without consulting his national security team or allies, and over strong objections from virtually everyone involved in the fight against the Islamic State group, according to U.S. and Turkish officials.
Trump stunned his Cabinet, lawmakers and much of the world with the move by rejecting the advice of his top aides and agreeing to a withdrawal in a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week, two officials briefed on the matter told The Associated Press.
The Dec. 14 call, described by officials who were not authorized to discuss the decision-making process publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, provides insight into a consequential Trump decision that prompted the resignation of widely respected Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. It also set off a frantic, four-day scramble to convince the president either to reverse or delay the decision.
The White House, State Department and Pentagon all declined to comment on the account of the decision to withdraw the troops, which have been in Syria to fight the Islamic State since 2015.
